Netflix releases trailer for Black Mirror movie Bandersnatch

After a week of holiday cheer, Netflix is about to give its subscribers an existential crisis with some new Black Mirror.

The streaming platform on Thursday released the first trailer for Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, which is apparently a standalone film and not part of the sci-fi anthology show's planned fifth season. As revealed in the footage, the film takes place in the 1980s and revolves around a programmer tasked with turning a book into a video game, but, according to Netflix, he is subsequently faced with "a mind-mangling challenge."

Rumors have suggested that this movie is actually the show's choose-your-own-adventure episode, with one report saying it features more than five hours of potential footage. Viewers would be asked to make decisions for the characters that change the outcome of the story, something Netflix has previously implemented with children's programming but never with a show aimed at adults. The new trailer doesn't explicitly confirm that Bandersnatch is interactive, but it does repeatedly emphasize the idea of making choices, and considering it labels itself not as a "film" but rather a "Black Mirror event," it's certainly a possibility.

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Black Mirror: Bandersnatch will start streaming on Dec. 28, and per The Hollywood Reporter, the regular fifth season will release in 2019. Watch the trailer below. Brendan Morrow